Easier Cocktail-Making? Not Really

Having recently tried 3 gadgets that are supposed to make drinking – or at least creating drinks – easier, I have to report they didn’t really work.

One was amusing: the Brookstone Cocktail Master. With two buttons held down, it shoots out the cocktail into your glass, and of course that’s fun. Though the electric stirrer part was easy to operate, and it was a little faster than actually shaking a drink to mix in simple syrup, the whole thing seemed rather unnecessary. It really isn’t made to put ice in — the stirrer gets caught up in the cubes. And I can imagine how messy it would get after a while…

Then there was the BarTule, which looked so lively, cute and compactly fit together. But it was more than disappointing, it hurt. The edges of the plastic tools were so sharp they cut into your hand when you tried to use them, especially the wine opener. And while it’s nice to have a clear ice bucket, this is not exactly the first thing I’d want on a picnic or at the beach – thinking about sand, bugs, etc. Worst of all, there’s no cocktail shaker in the kit.

I really had high hopes for the Barmaid Drink Rimmer when I saw it demo’d. But at home, it proved very difficult to put the right amount of moisture along the top edge of the glass. And impossible to find the right angle to deposit a consistent band of the flavored sugar on the rim. The producers kindly pointed me at their website for detailed instructions on how to hold the Drink Rimmer against the glass. Maybe with practice this would work. Maybe a bartender would get the hang of after a few dozen tries. And maybe a bartender would be able to afford to have several of these gadgets, because you need to be able to change out the flavors of rimmers for different drinks. But not me, not in my house.